Drive down Highway 13 through downtown Savage and you'll pass a three-story building sandwiched between Natchez Avenue South and Ottawa Avenue South. Forty-two apartments sit upstairs. Below them, roughly 17,000 square feet of commercial space holds a preschool, a daycare, three retail tenants, and two storefronts that have sat empty long enough that most people driving past have stopped wondering what's supposed to go there.
That building is the Hamilton Building, and it's owned by the Savage Economic Development Authority, which leases the site to the Scott County Community Development Agency through 2049. The two open ground-floor spaces are the most visible piece of a redevelopment effort that's been running quietly in the background for years. The physical downtown hasn't changed much yet. But a lot of the groundwork that has to happen before it can change already has.
What's Renting Space in the Hamilton Building Right Now
Here's the current tenant mix, as the city describes it:
- A preschool and a daycare occupy part of the first floor
- Three retail tenants fill the remaining leased commercial space
- Two ground-floor spaces are still vacant and actively being marketed for new tenants
That's not a building waiting for a wrecking ball. It's a mostly-occupied mixed-use property with a couple of open storefronts, which is a very different story than "downtown Savage is stalled." The vacancy is the visible symptom of a redevelopment plan that's further along administratively than it looks from the sidewalk.
The Zoning Code Changed on June 1. Nobody Renovated a Storefront That Week.
Savage adopted a new citywide Zoning and Subdivision Code effective June 1, 2026, the product of an update that started back in 2023. The city's own planning page notes that some existing applications and handouts still reference the old code while staff finishes updating the paperwork. That code took effect three months before this post, without a single visible construction crane downtown.
That citywide update is separate from, but sets the stage for, a more specific rezoning still to come for downtown itself. The current Hamilton Overlay District, which governs the area generally south of Highway 13, west of the Burnsville border, east of the Dan Patch rail line, and north of McColl Drive, mixes commercial, mixed-use, institutional, park, and multiple residential density designations under one patchwork of rules. Recommending changes to that overlay and its zoning is explicitly part of the scope the city handed to the consultant it's hiring through the downtown redevelopment RFP. In other words, the general rulebook already changed. The downtown-specific rulebook is still being written.
What's Decided, What's Still Being Studied
| Piece of the plan | Status as of August 2026 |
|---|---|
| New citywide Zoning and Subdivision Code | Adopted, effective June 1, 2026 |
| Downtown-specific rezoning of the Hamilton Overlay District | Not yet written, part of the consultant study's scope |
| Consultant-led downtown redevelopment study (Hamilton Building use, parking, land use, gateway design) | Active request for proposals, study area boundaries already defined |
| Marion W. Savage School site future use | Under discussion between the school district and developers, no plan finalized |
| Quentin Avenue/123rd Street gateway upgrade | Tied to Highway 13 changes, planning stage |
| Highway 13 and Dakota Avenue interchange | Proposed by MnDOT and Scott County, construction not yet underway |
The pattern is consistent. The legal and procedural work, the part nobody sees, is either done or moving. The physical work, the part everyone will eventually notice, hasn't started.
The Building Nobody's Used in Years
The former Marion W. Savage School site has sat vacant for several years, according to the city's own description of the property. The school district is currently in discussions with developers about what comes next, with an apartment building, townhomes, or row homes all on the table. Nothing has been finalized. The city has said it will seek community input as those plans develop, which means the timeline for that site depends less on Savage's internal process and more on when the district and a developer actually reach an agreement.
If you live near that site, the practical takeaway is patience rather than expectation. Several years of vacancy plus an open-ended "discussing options" status means this isn't a project with a posted completion date. It's one to watch, not one to plan around.
The Roads That Will Actually Move the Needle
Two separate road projects touch downtown Savage this year, and they're easy to conflate if you're not paying attention to which one is which.
The first is the proposed interchange at Highway 13 and Dakota Avenue, a joint MnDOT and Scott County project that would add a new interchange, realign portions of the southern frontage road, and build a new northern frontage road connecting Dakota Avenue to Yosemite Avenue. This is the project tied most directly to the downtown gateway concept at Quentin Avenue and 123rd Street. It hasn't broken ground.
The second is the city's 2026 Street Improvement Project, a separate and much smaller-scale effort covering about 1.83 miles of residential roadway, including Alabama Avenue, Colorado Avenue, Brunswick Avenue, Zarthan Avenue, and several streets in the Preserve development. That work was expected to run from May through September 2026, meaning it's likely wrapping up or already finished as you read this. It's not part of the downtown redevelopment story at all. It's routine street maintenance that happens to be running on a similar calendar.
If you've seen orange cones downtown this summer, there's a decent chance they belong to the street project, not the redevelopment plan. The interchange and gateway work is still in the design phase, so any construction activity currently underway is more likely maintenance than the transformation the redevelopment plan describes.
Why the Study Also Covers Parking, Stormwater, and Vacant Lots
The scope of the consultant study the city is running goes beyond storefronts and apartments. It also includes a review of public parking supply against current and future demand, an evaluation of vacant lots currently used for parking to determine their highest use, and a look at stormwater and floodway rules, since part of the redevelopment area sits within a mapped shoreland and flood zone. None of that is glamorous, but all of it explains why a downtown redevelopment vision takes years rather than months. You can't finalize what goes into the empty Hamilton Building storefronts, or the old school site, until you know how many parking spaces the district can legally support and which lots are safe to build on.
What This Means If You Live Near Downtown
If your daily route runs through downtown Savage, the honest read on where things stand is this: the framework is partly built, and the visible change is still ahead of you. The citywide zoning code that any downtown-specific rules will build on is already in effect. The study that will recommend specific uses for the Hamilton Building's empty spaces and the vacant lots nearby is underway. The interchange that would reshape the western entrance to downtown is proposed but not funded into a construction start. The school site is still just a conversation between the district and interested developers.
None of that means nothing is happening. It means the order of operations runs backward from what most people expect. The rules change first. The visible buildings change last. If you want to track downtown Savage's actual progress rather than guess at it from construction fencing, the city's Let's Talk Savage engagement page and the Planning and Zoning updates on savagemn.gov are the two places where each of these pieces gets updated as it moves.
For a broader look at how downtown fits into the rest of the city, our Savage neighborhood guide covers the surrounding streets and what makes each pocket of Savage distinct. And if you've been wondering how this kind of downtown shift might affect which part of Savage makes sense for your own next move, we've written more on choosing the right Savage neighborhood for different priorities.
Whatever stage of watching downtown Savage you're at, whether you're just curious or actively thinking about what a changing downtown means for home values nearby, the team at Custodio Home Group knows this corridor well. Request your free home valuation and we'll walk you through what's actually happening on your block, not just what the fencing suggests.
